I don't find Sacred Grove and Treasurer all that comparable. Sacred Grove is a +$3 and +buy with the benefits being random and the best benefits helping the opponent. Treasurer can consistently be played as a Moneylender, and then it can become a super Explorer if you trash Silver/Gold and kingdom treasures for whatever reason. Explorer cards are generally easier to take advantage of in decks you can control, and the trashing of treasurer helps you get that control in the first place. Sacred Grove is more for when I need buys+money and the off Wisp or silver or something. And then there's Key.

In my one Renaissance game; I made the mistake of valuing Recruiter too much. I bought 2, while my opponent bought none, and I lost. The problem is, it's not a draw card, but it looks like it. The fact that the trashing is mandatory hurts a lot. There also just weren't really any terminals that I needed the Villagers for (other than Recruiter), so I ended up with a lot of unused Villagers at the end. I should have trashed one Recruiter with the other sooner than I did.

The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.

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According to the markus stats, the winner gains one copy of Recruiter in ~41% of games and two Recruiters in ~30% of games. This suggests to me that single Recruiter with a complementary trasher is often a winning approach. Two Recruiters should be the norm if you have no better means of trashing your starting cards, or if Recruiter is your best source of +actions. The winner gains 3+ Recruiters in 16+% of games, but I don't have a good feel for the conditions that would recommend that approach. The ~13% of the time the winner gains zero Recruiters includes the rare kingdoms with superior trashing and +actions, and also mistakes.

The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.

Especially Apprentice. But see, Recruiter is better than a trashing Lost City when it trashes Estates, because maybe you don't need the villagers that turn. Remember those times where you trigger Shanty Town but have no use for those actions, well Recruiter saves those actions for later. You do need to be careful with the forced trashing. If you got two recruiters, consider trashing one to the other before you finish trashing all your junk.

The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.

Especially Apprentice. But see, Recruiter is better than a trashing Lost City when it trashes Estates, because maybe you don't need the villagers that turn. Remember those times where you trigger Shanty Town but have no use for those actions, well Recruiter saves those actions for later. You do need to be careful with the forced trashing. If you got two recruiters, consider trashing one to the other before you finish trashing all your junk.

It is also worth noting that while Recruiter gets less awesome in the later game, buying and trashing stuff for Villagers is still almost as cost-effective as Acting Troupe while being more flexible.

I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.

No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?

Sorry. I got multiple requests to change it. I assumed that everyone did it countdown style - because all the other lists I had seen were like that - and assumed that these guys got it wrong.

I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.

No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?

Sorry. I got multiple requests to change it. I assumed that everyone did it countdown style - because all the other lists I had seen were like that - and assumed that these guys got it wrong.

I was mistaken. I won't do it again.

Yes, it was a conscious decision by my fellow authors and I, who agreed that we prefer to read the lists in that order. Since the alternative version is available courtesy of Gendo, I will revert the edits.

The $5 card list is so tough to determine. Once you get inside the top 20 or so you really can't go wrong. I would be fine with recruiter at #1 since something has to be. I'm also fine with wharf at #1. I would also probably be fine with mountebank or cultist at #1. It's probably better to think of them in tiers.

I think bridge troll should be in the top 10. It's a duration bridge with duration +buy. It needs some help for sure, as a ton of cards do, but it's usually a race to pull off the megaturn. Bridge troll makes it easier than anything else.

Ghost ship inside the top 10 is interesting to see. We're used to seeing the older cards fall in the rankings, except for something like outpost, but I guess there aren't as many good counters for ghost ship. If you're fortunate enough to open with it, your opponent is essentially playing in quicksand. It's such a gross attack. I don't have a problem with it in the top 10 but I think it's interesting to see.

I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.

No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?

Sorry. I got multiple requests to change it. I assumed that everyone did it countdown style - because all the other lists I had seen were like that - and assumed that these guys got it wrong.

I was mistaken. I won't do it again.

Yes, it was a conscious decision by my fellow authors and I, who agreed that we prefer to read the lists in that order. Since the alternative version is available courtesy of Gendo, I will revert the edits.

Then why did you start with the bottom third? If you prefer seeing the highest ranked card first, why didn't you start with the top third?

I really do not understand your preference. Building up to the top card is much more dramatic and interesting. With your way, it's just "oh that's the winner congrats wharf" and it's anticlimactic.

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The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.

A Moat that trashes Copper is super awesome.

And so is a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper, for what it's worth.

In general it seems like harmless cantrips and non-terminals do better in the Markus rankings compared to the Qvist rankings, and terminal draw does worse. This makes sense, and does not mean that the cards are necessarily ranked incorrectly. So I looked around for more interesting outliers. Here are some winners:Ball - Qvist 79, Markus 46, 65% buyTormentor - Qvist 93, Markus 67, 55% gainSacred Grove - Qvist 96, Markus 74, 50% gainMint - Qvist 92, Markus 72, 52% gain

Then why did you start with the bottom third? If you prefer seeing the highest ranked card first, why didn't you start with the top third?

I really do not understand your preference. Building up to the top card is much more dramatic and interesting. With your way, it's just "oh that's the winner congrats wharf" and it's anticlimactic.

It's a compromise to a certain extent, I'm sure people who prefer to read the list bottom-up would like starting with the top 25 cards even less.

I guess I think the most interesting part of these rankings is in the middle; we all know that Cultist, Wharf, Mountebank are really good and splitting hairs between them isn't terribly meaningful. Whenever I read the rankings presented in the other direction, I just skim to the bottom and then actually pay attention as I scroll up. I find it easier to absorb what useful information we can get out of this exercise that way, since the logical structure of a list is top->bottom.

Because Markus's statistics end when someone resigns, Groundskeeper and Fleet may be part of the winning strategy but never get bought if someone resigns too early. Forum presumably does particularly well in gain percentage metrics because it does not cost a buy, so there are times when it is effectively free.

The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.

A Moat that trashes Copper is super awesome.

It would be awesome for a $3 card (essentially Masquerade with forced trashing), but not so much for $5.

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And so is a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper, for what it's worth.

The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.

A Moat that trashes Copper is super awesome.

It would be awesome for a $3 card (essentially Masquerade with forced trashing), but not so much for $5.

A Masq that costs $5 is still a really good buy ASAP card. Recruiter giving Villagers in exchange for non-optional trash is enough to help by even more.

I would have no problem putting Recruiter at #1, although I'm still partial to Mountebank or Cultist for #1. (Wharf's time as #1 has faded a bit, now that there's more +Buy in Dominion, and more competing options in its niche.)

As Gendo mentioned, Recruiter isn't a card you want to use as your main draw. It's a trasher and a villager source with low opportunity cost for your current hand. You make this mistake once, then Recruiter is good every game afterward.

And so is a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper, for what it's worth.

How do you get that from any of the cards mentioned?

He is reminding people that he likes Pooka.

Easy to see why, a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper is great, especially when it doesn't whiff when drawn with three Estates and a stubborn Heirloom.

The thing is, Pooka isn't actually a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper. It's a Confusion that becomes a Hunting Grounds only if you first trash a Copper. Trashing after you draw makes a huge difference. And it's one of the main reasons Recruiter and Masquerade are good while Pooka isn't.

I also think Rebuild's steep drop seems like an overcorrection. Sure, Rebuild isn't unstoppable and strong decks will beat it, but the card is strong enough on its own that it simply dominates a decent percentage of the boards it appears on. I guess its partially a question of how much you weight "how often is this card good" vs "how good is this card when it is good?" in your definition of a 'good' card.

To make better use of the scatterplot area, I plotted difference between weighted and unweighted against mean of weighted and unweighted (in Bland and Altman fashion), so cards that go well with them professionals are at the top and cards that are generally favoured are on the right. A couple of cards have been omitted to avoid clutter.